Changing the passenger max process

(1) Passenger spawns new process and keeps them in a pool to handle concurrent requests. You can check the existing value by executing this command in your application directory:

$ passenger-status

(2) There are 3 configurations to play with:

1. passenger_max_pool_size - This defines the maximum processes that can be held in the pool. If you have more than 1 ruby application running, it is the total of all the application process. The default value is 6.
2. passenger_min_instants - The minimum amount of process to keep for a particular application. The default value is 1.
3. passenger_max_instants - The maximum amount of process possible for a particular application. The default value is 0.

(3) For "passenger_max_pool_size", it is usually set in passenger.conf or Nginx's http block. E.g.

$ pico /etc/nginx/passenger.conf

passenger_max_pool_size 10;

(4) The maximum pool size is determined by the total amount of RAM you have and RAM required per process. The equation (for single threaded setup) is as follow:

max_app_processes = (TOTAL_RAM * 0.75) / RAM_PER_PROCESS

RAM_PER_PROCESS can be observed and estimated by checking the running processes.

(5) While the other 2 config can be set in Nginx's server block as they are application-level config. E.g.

$ pico /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

server {
  ...
  passenger_min_instances 2;
  passenger_max_instances 4;
  ...
}

(6) Reload application or Nginx to reflect the new configuration.

Reference: https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/config/nginx/reference